


Yellow Submarine (An Autobiographical Story)

by sherlocked221



Category: A Hard Day's Night (1964), The Beatles
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-16 01:45:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 9,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9268256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherlocked221/pseuds/sherlocked221
Summary: An old man writes an autobiography recounting his... unconventional teenage life living with his three best friends in a less than regular home.3 DISCLAIMERS (PLEASE READ)-While I am a fan of the Beatles, I am only just in the budding stages of learning this fandom, so take those who I talk about as fictional characters based on the Beatles. I have based their voices/characters on their Hard Day's Night personalities rather than real life, so please excuse any inaccuracies or references that seem... off. It was just ramblings that turned into a longer story.-I have added the warning underage as you could say that both George and Paul are underage, but where I am from, they are not.-I have no knowledge of how submarines work... if I make mistakes on the actual submarine... its because of that. Think of it more as an underwater boat home(?)





	1. Best friends, independent young men and a life to ourselves.

**Author's Note:**

> Adding this here too because I'm a crazy person
> 
> 3 DISCLAIMERS (PLEASE READ)  
> -While I am a fan of the Beatles, I am only just in the budding stages of learning this fandom, so take those who I talk about as fictional characters based on the Beatles. I have based their voices/characters on their Hard Day's Night personalities rather than real life, so please excuse any inaccuracies or references that seem... off. It was just ramblings that turned into a longer story.  
> -I have added the warning underage as you could say that both George and Paul are underage, but where I am from, they are not.  
> -I have no knowledge of how submarines work... if I make mistakes on the actual submarine... its because of that. Think of it more as an underwater boat home(?)

When I was a young kid, I mean sort of teenage years but young you know, my life was an interesting one. I had no interest in living a normal life, at home, with my family, I didn’t have any of that. I wanted to move as far away from where I was born as possible and so I moved with three of my friends. Where to? Well, we went under seas, not sailing no, we somehow got this submarine and we lived where ever we could anchor the thing down. It sounds crazy, a boy of 18 I must have been, living with a bunch of friends underground… but it was our escape from the world and our independence.

And we were the epitome of childish teenagers. No girls allowed was sprayed across the entrance of our submarine and we fought so often, just about everything. We shared rooms, me and John in one cramped bunker, the other two in a bunkbed in the adjacent room and there were fights all the time, but we never meant anything we said, not really. Thinking about it now, it’s never the fights that spring to mind first, it was the love… all that love. We were, some of us, brothers in a sense, in others not but we’ll get to that.

Now, I remember when we first moved in, that first night. We were meant to be deciding on how exactly this whole arrangement would work. It was an expensive job, looking after and living in a submarine and we couldn’t hide out for the entirety of our lives. We’d go down for a month perhaps then come up for a week or two, then back down again with enough food stock and toys and what not that we would need for the next month. We’d work in those weeks getting pocket money wages between us four for all those things we needed, as well as having occasional times when one of us would stay out to work for more money. Think about it, we had to not only feed ourselves and entertain ourselves, but we also had to maintain this little house that would keep us dry for a month, only getting a breath of air when we surfaced at the end of a month. However, this became like clockwork for us after a few months, not right away and certainly nothing had been decided on that first day, nothing. We were all running from something with a few bits and pieces to our names, all the money we could save up and limited knowledge of how our submarine worked. We set up shop below the surface soon enough, having talked to the man who sold us our home for hours about everything we needed to do to it, how to operate it, where to hide out, that sort of thing and we were quite pleased with ourselves having stocked up for four boys for four weeks. It was crazy, we were crazy hyper that first night that no matter how many times George told us that we might need to actually think about what we were doing, there was no settling us down. John and I were hopping on the walls, picking up our guitars which had their home in our living/kitchen space beside Ringo’s drum set, but then throwing them back on their stands when we couldn’t calm enough to play. Our voices were so high pitched, so quickly spoken that we wouldn’t have sounded any good singing anyway. The only thing that calmed us down was the suggestion to play cards. I haven’t a clue who suggested it, it just seemed like a good idea and we all took our places around the booth-like table next to the kitchen counters.

George dealt out the cards, John kept poking me in the nose or cheek and Ringo couldn’t stop eating. He insisted on scoffing the first loaf of bread laying on the side in that first night being there and that was the first scare that we might not have bought enough food with us. We all were a little annoyed at the fact that we may have had to surface earlier than expected. We didn’t want to go up any earlier than three weeks really, or else we might have had doubts and just left our submarine dream to sink. We lasted though, a whole 4 weeks under the water. We learnt the kinds of foods to bring and those to not, because we may not have thought much about perishables. Anything that would go off in a week that we needed, our old friend the seller (and for the life of me I cannot remember his name) would send down to us and we would send up our moulding rubbish from the week before. He was a nice kind of guy, we stayed close to him, but his name to us was always ‘The Seller’ since the day we met him. Yet still I am ahead of myself, we have not passed that first night.

We played around three games of Blackjack, no money or gambling involved because we had nothing to give one another, and that seemed to calm us down. While we did end up getting pretty tired, we spent much of the night and early hours of the morning messing around. Music, we could play anytime we wanted as, down there, we had no real sense of time. It was a teenager’s dream, no responsibilities, no time constraints and nothing to do. We were not the type to get bored easily, see, we were going to be a real band one day and there was always a song we could write or practice. After our games of blackjack, we played rounds of 21’s, picked up our instruments at one point and played around on those for a very short time. Then we fell asleep at about 3 in the morning, piled on top of each other either on a chair or on the floor.

Best friends, independent young men, a life to ourselves.


	2. The Next Morning, the Birth of our Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Very short

Waking up that morning, I had somehow ended up with half my chest laying on Ringo’s back, my leg either side of the one leg of our table and someone touching my foot by accident. The seats in the Sub were built into the wall sort of, your back being against the wall and a bench built coming out of it, then pillows sewn into the back and seat bits. There were two other stools that were moveable and collapsible that we usually kept under the table, but I remember them not being there that morning, because my legs were under the table instead. We might have packed them away that night, but that I do not remember. The table was a round thing with one pole holding it up, built into the floor, close enough to the seats for us not to spill any food down ourselves from having to lean to the table, but far enough away so that one of us could fit between them, which was exactly what John had done, incidentally also being the one to be touching my foot. And George, well he’d taken himself off to the top bunk in what had been established as his and Ringo’s room. Our first day started at 12pm and we were all in a mess, but we were now alone, now it was just us, ready to fend for ourselves in the bright blue ocean.


	3. About My Boys, My Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where many of the inaccuracies might lie

So, about my boys, my friends;

George was the quiet one, the almost sensible one despite being the youngest (17, when we first moved in). He liked the craziness of what we were doing, he loved it in fact, but he also liked that we would have a reasonably quiet life, like moving to the wilderness. He hated being the one to stay back for a month without us, just because he hated baring the real world without us there, but he civilly took his go like all of us. When we (and I mean John and I) brought up this idea to live in a Submarine, he thought we were insane, that it was all a prank and played along, always making a quip. It caught on eventually that we were joking as much as we were about becoming musicians, which, by the way, we were deadly serious about, by which time his questions became more how we were going to manage this kind of life. He enjoyed, in his down times, to be alone with his guitar in a room where no one else was, even if that meant the bathroom. Most of the time, however, he preferred to be with us in our group, messing around with us or letting us make him giggle with our antics.

Ringo. Ringo was cool, a bit silly and often was the one to get bored the fastest, but he had his ways of curbing that boredom. He was still learning to play the drums back then, so he often would practice, or would study, learn to read music, that sort of thing. Funny how he was the oldest (20) and yet he did way more learning than any of us younger lot, like we didn’t bother with any of that and, with the music reading at least, it would be us teaching him. Sometimes he felt ashamed of that; silly really because we didn’t think any less of him, we actually enjoyed teaching. It was another thing to keep us occupied after all. Anyway, he was good at things that we weren’t as well. He liked to make food (there was very little actual cooking due to the enclosure, but we managed a few cooked meals, once a week or something) and thankfully so as us other three hadn’t the attention span for that type of domestic chore. We would all clean, though. I remember that. We had this agreement that everyone would keep their stuff out the way as long as everyone else did the same, which included washing up after meals, we’d all take turns- or play cards for it. Ringo, though to get back onto subject, also adored to be in the group, like always having to be in a room with someone else, even if they didn’t want him to be there. He liked the games we’d play and often instigated them if John had not beaten him to it. Oh, but one thing that really got on all of our nerves about our dear friend… his bloody snoring! Night would come around and he’d fall asleep and anyone caught with a difficulty getting to sleep before he did would struggle for the rest of the night having the encompassing sound of Ringo’s horrific snores echoing. I slept in the other room and it was like having the boy sleeping beside me when he begun snoring; the sound was so loud. Still, we bared it, we bared it for all that time below the surface. How George- his roommate- ever slept was beyond me.

And, of course, John. Some said he was the leader, others said that we had to look after him because he liked getting himself into all kinds of trouble. He did like that sort of thing, making people laugh, most of all making us laugh, but he had a serious side. He cared about all of us so much; there were a few times when we were sick and he never left our side until we felt better. His songs, the ones that he wrote- we were both songwriters- mostly were as fun as he was, but some had a darker tone and those made for very good mellowing tunes when we were feeling less than brilliant, because there were always moments when we needed some musical comforting. He was always good at that. And because I have mentioned the ages of my other friends, I will add that John was 20 years old when we moved in, 3 months younger than Ringo, but people always though he was the oldest. Maybe it was the way he acted as our leader, or maybe it was because he seemed like the oldest that they thought him the leader… perhaps they were one in the same assumption.

He was also a genius at keeping busy. At some point, we all felt bored, I mean we were enclosed in a submarine that had a total of 4 rooms, not including the cooled storage or the smallish walk in wardrobe attached to Ringo and George’s room, at some point we were going to run out of things to do or at least feeling like doing the things that we did before, but John limited those moments. He might see us all sitting, slumping on chairs or spread out on the floor with lethargic expressions pasted onto our faces and he’d force us into some silly game, just something that had no real rules nor objective so that we wouldn’t give up on this cute little dream we all had, the one that entailed us living in a less than spacious tube under the water. If we were not in the mood to play games, whether that be the games he made up or those we had brought down with us, board game types, he would suggest practicing/learning a new song. He always had lyrics that needed a sound to it. Otherwise, we might watch a movie, thank god we could do that. He always suggested Psycho for some reason, when I knew he preferred comedy movies. Still, we must’ve watched that bloody film about 50 times in each month. I remember a few times we’d put it on in the background while we were cleaning up or eating or something and, like singing along to a song, we would recite every line to ourselves, merely subconsciously. But, what I am trying to get at is that John was the one that got us through every day, every week, every month. We hated when it was his month to be away from us. I remember counting down the days…

As for me, I’m not sure what I was to everyone else. I liked my alone time as much as I did being with the group. I was sometimes funny- I think- but I had quite a few down days. I was in a place where I didn’t want to be anywhere so I was quite happy to be away from the world and I valued my friends. An all-rounder you might say, maybe so. Maybe everyone else saw themselves just as I did and its only me having lived with them and observed them that gives them these architypes (the fun one, the quiet one, the… Ringo one.) I guess I was the romantic one. I had this romantic dream of living independently, of ending up as a famous musician somehow- despite living away from the world. I was always falling in love with actresses, always looking for love somewhere. You can probably imagine that I was the hopeful, optimistic one as well, because I was so desperate for this life to work.


	4. The Toothbrush Incident

We were all very close, us lot. Some friends hate on each other, joking and digging at each other. Some like playing silly little games or laughed for hours at in-jokes. You can always tell those close friends by the little things they do, but with us, it was different. It was those big things that no one else would do that showed just how close/crazy we all were, for example, the bathroom was not a sacred place of solitude where one could do their business in private or cleanse themselves to make them seem presentable. It seemed like a social gathering hub, a place that was so small and yet would be forced to fit four people in it at once. I don’t think I ever bothered with the lock on that door, I’m not even sure there was one. If you were washing, in the midst of scrubbing off that teenage odour that gathered at your arm pits, there would be no stopping one of the other lot to come in if they were busting for the toilet. Sounds disgusting, I know, but we never really took any notice. Call it close or creepy, we just didn’t care about seeing anything or being embarrassed. We knocked the shame out of quiet George and we opened Ringo up to us quite quickly. Neither me nor John had such a thing as shame, so we were alright.

However, there is one instance where I do not know whether I should’ve been happy to forcibly be that close to my friends or not… the toothbrush incident.

You see, we were all terrors for forgetting things. Those weeks between our submerged stages were as much a time for forgetting as they were for remembering what we needed, leaving us each living without a seemingly essential part of normal life for a month. For me, I never had enough socks. I’d buy a new set almost every time we left the Sub, yet by the end of the week, we’d be back under the water and only one pair would remain, causing me to either spend my days wandering around barefoot- never the best idea when the floor was loosely carpeted with the actual wood flooring beneath often spiking through- or I would wear whose ever socks were the least dirty from the day before.

John forgot all manors of things; underwear, trousers, shirts, towels, new movies we’d bought and left in his ‘capable’ hands but ended up in our land-rooms instead of following us down to the Sub. He had this one hat as well, a flat cap, that he often would leave everywhere other than in his bedroom on the sub. Deprived of it, he used to say he felt naked, that clothes he wore felt see-through because his head was not covered with this one, special hat. This was also the reason that he kept losing it, because he insisted on taking it outside the Sub so that he didn’t feel depressed without it.

George was good with remembering. Well, the best of a bad bunch. Should he forget something, it would be small and he could live lacking it, but that wouldn’t stop him complaining. He might find that something would be easier had he remembered it and would make a small comment that wouldn’t be annoying the first time, but he kept doing it and by the end of the month, we were all saying what he was going to before he could even think to.

Ringo was the culprit this time, however. As an averagely forgetful person, he didn’t really have one thing he always forgot, but he was still pretty bad at keeping things with him, bringing things to the Sub for the month. It must’ve been the second time we came up for air since we’d first moved in and we were walking around just a small shop, like a small grocery shop. I found Ringo by the toothbrushes with a single toothbrush in one hand and a pack of four in the other. It seemed odd, we’d each brought down our own toiletries on that first day we moved in and, as kids, it wasn’t like we cared much about our own cleanliness. As long as we had a toothbrush, we would keep our teeth clean, but we- or at least I- did not see the need to change my brush regularly.

“What are you looking at these for?” I had asked and his answer set me back a bit.

“I forgot mine ages ago. Do you think everybody else will want a new one too?” My first question back was clarifying just what he had been doing with his teeth all this time, and he replied with;

“That’s why I was wondering if everyone else would want a new one…”

Basically, Ringo had been using our toothbrushes, just randomly using which ever he picked up first, and just assumed that we all knew. I got horrible shivers down my spine when I thought of those times that my toothbrush had been wet already when I went to use it… to think it had been used already. Of course, I wanted to buy a new one, but I don’t think we ever got round to it for some reason, despite standing in the store ready with a pack of four clasped in Ringo’s fingers as he guiltily looked up at me, apologetically admitting to the secret he’d kept for far too long. John and George found out too and were equally as horrified, so why we never ended up with new toothbrushes that week is still beyond me, still gives me those grossed-out shivers.

Oh, and you think that’s the end, but that was not the only time… About three other times did we bare sharing toothbrushes, that is unknowingly, and always seemed to be after we had brought new ones. Well Ringo, I’m glad I was close to you… but not that close.


	5. A girl for George

I think the next thing I really remember- like the next story I should tell- is the day that we found out George was still a virgin. I don’t know why we all just assumed that he had already got it on with some pretty bird who liked quiet, nerd types, but we were all so surprised that night we played 21 truths. As I said, we were typical teenage boys, we liked to force secrets out of one another or put our dear friends into awkward situations, but we gave up on playing the dares side of truth or dare because the most interesting thing we could do was take incriminating pictures of each other and that just got boring. We’d seen all we wanted of each other, thank you very much.

But truths, they were still fun. Usually, they were sexual, because what’s more fun than cringing at friend’s awkward experiences? They were also the only things we didn’t really know about each other, so we were learning something new each time we played, kept it fun and engaging. And we’d played it a few times before George ever piped up with his whopper of a truth, so he’d kept the secret- or omission- quite well. Before that, he’d only told us stories that he’d heard from other people. We were idiots really, because he never tried to hide that these anecdotes were not his own. They always started with ‘someone told me,’ or ‘have you ever heard the one where.’ We should have known, really, that he had no experiences of his own to tell. However, this is how we eventually found out;

We went around the circle, avoiding and tactfully passing on the threat of saying 21- had we put this amount of thought into school work, we certainly would all have A’s by now-  and George, by no real accident, landed on the number. It was John’s doing as I remember. He wanted everyone to have had a go, the first five or six goes having been chance rather than thought and the rest being even-ing out everyone’s goes, so he orchestrated it. George sighed and buried his face in his hands in embarrassment when he realised that the fatal number had landed on him, but all in all, he was a good sport about it. Now, here was the moment where we would torture him, not on purpose most of the time because we would have to group up and think of a question to ask him which took us ages, but it was fun to see the paranoia and fear on his face as he thought up all the worst-case-scenario questions we could ask him. This time, I’m not sure who came up with it, but we asked him about his first time. “Who was your first?” or, “How old were you when you first…?” That sort of thing and George just looked at us with a calm expression, if slightly red around the cheek area, as he said, “I haven’t had a ‘first’ yet.”

Well our faces changed. Mine was stuck on half surprise, half trying not to laugh. John, John’s eyes were wide and jaw dropped open as though someone had filled it with weights. Ringo, I’m pretty sure Ringo just burst out in laughter, surprised, confused laughter.

“No way!” was our joint reaction and so begun our quest to find George a girl willing to take his virginity. He had no complaints as long as he liked her and that she wouldn’t mind if he was a little shy. From them on, John and I were on a mission. We had many mutual friends, so we were very good at thinking up girls that we knew and comparing notes on them, whether they’d be good for George, whether they might end up too clingy and persuade him to stay on land, whether they might end up breaking his heart. We had some girls in mind that we would speak to on our next week of shore leave.

Ringo had some names too, but his main concern was how this was going to happen. Would they invite one girl to live with them for a month or would they have to try and cram the meeting process and… other business into a short week? Ringo had pro and con-ed every aspect of these two choices, but really, it depended on the girl.

That week we surfaced was a panicked one. My first choice for George proved to be so difficult to find again that Ringo and John got there before I did. In fact, I only ever got a letter back from that girl and I never saw her again. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be. John had several names, but he’d gone for a red head with a fiery personality and a giggly, kind side. Ringo had this blonde who seemed a little out of any of our lot’s leagues. Turns out she was a shallow bitch, taking one look at George and saying that it would never work. Luckily, the red head seemed far more interested in the situation and fell for George’s guitar playing and quiet, shy humour. She fit him because she was pretty shy in social circumstances, but opened up like a book when she decided that she liked him. I remember her liking all of us enough to divulge all sorts of information, the type that would have fit in our 21 truths games.

There were no hard feelings over who found the girl who ended up in George’s bed, because we all just wanted to see the poor boy score. In fact, we praised John for doing so well, better than us, in finding a match.

The night in which our little George joined us big boys was also pretty fun. The girl had, luckily, been ok with the formalities being rushed, so in the rooms we used during the surfaced weeks George guided her to his bed and they began to undress. It had been three days since they met, but they acted as though they’d been together forever, old friends turned lovers, so they didn’t find the whole first time thing so awkward. That was, they did not find it awkward together, they found the fact that just on the other side of the door, me, John and Ringo couldn’t help but be listening in. Actually, the girl did not find it so bad. She left George standing in his boxers by the foot of the bed to walk to the door and opened it causing us eavesdroppers to fall forward. I had been on the floor, knelt on one knee with my ear pressed against the crack between the door and wall in hopes of hearing them. I did not take such a tumble compared to my other voyeuristic friends. I fell forward a little, but caught myself on my other knee. John, who had been standing up with half his face mushed against the door while his long body, being the tallest, stretched behind Ringo and I, ended up falling straight over Ringo and landed in a position similar to when he was standing, only now his legs were higher than his head, resting on Ringo’s back. The girl smiled and rolled her eyes kindly, then asked if we’d prefer some better seats than the cheap restricted view ones we’d paid for. That was, if George didn’t mind. Thank God, we were really close with him or else we may have ended up being sent out of the room entirely and told to sleep on the sofa. Us three boys took up seats on the bed opposite which usually was occupied by myself and we watched the whole endeavour. When they… ‘finished’ we erupted in a loud chorus of cheers and claps. George was no longer the sweet, innocent, young one in our group.


	6. Shameful Link to a shameless confession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another short one..

Nights were so important to me, for some reason. Nights always made me feel sombre and made me thankful for what I had. I may not have been very close to my actual family, but I had John, I had George and Ringo. Some nights, I’d lay awake, hyper from binge eating sweets but tired enough to have followed my friends to bed and I’d think about who lay on the bottom bunk, who slept in the other room, about the vast walls of water that pressed against our little creaking submarine, a yellow speck in a wide blue ocean. If I didn’t have all of this, where would I be?

What made me feel better was those nights when sleep did elude me, but it did so to John as well. He would always be the first to speak, ask if I was awake, if I could sleep. By the third or fourth month we lived together, we’d memorised each other’s breathing patterns to the point we didn’t need to ask if the other was awake, but it was out of a lack of something else to say that kept us asking those same questions. He’d ask me and I’d mumble back. He might make a joke, then ask what I was thinking about. I think he knew what nights meant to me, how they made me feel closer to my friends despite being in separate rooms, so he always wanted to know what was going through my head. I might tell him- I remember so many times talking through the night about anything we could think of, everything that had popped into my head- or I might’ve just said, ‘nothing.’ He knew that it was never because I didn’t want to tell him- I told him every deep, dark secret that ever took its home inside my brain- but because I was tired or it was not worth another thought. We knew each other well.

He was often thoughtful at night too. If I could not be bothered to relate the strange dreams I had before falling asleep, then I would ask him what he was thinking of. I loved to listen to him speak. He was like the anchor that kept my boat stable amongst the strong waves of the sea. His voice would be centre in my mind.

I’m going to admit something and you may not be surprised, but back then, it was a far bigger thing than it is now. It was one of those nights when John was talking to me and I, in the top bunk, was smiling like a stupid fool, just happy to hear his voice; I realised that there was a deeper feeling there than friendship. When I said before that some of us were brothers, some were not, John was not my brother at that point. Basically, I was falling in love with him, and that scared the shit out of me because we were all taught how ‘wrong’ that was.

However, in those moments, it did not feel wrong, to sound so very cheche.

To make this even more embarrassing, I used to sleep in his bed. John liked hugs (and I laugh thinking about it) but after we had relayed our entire contents of our brains to one another, we might ask if the other can sleep now. The answer was usually a definitive no, especially after my little epiphany made me slightly needier when it came to spending time alone with my ‘friend.’ John would offer up a place in his bed, an extra pillow and in the bottom bunk in our bedroom, we’d sleep. Ringo and George never found it strange so we half expected it to be a normal thing, plus it was just us on the Sub, we didn’t need to hide anything like emotions, there was no keeping up appearances. It was all raw, normal and what felt right. Only, for me, it felt far more than right.

So, yes, perhaps I used the night anecdote as a pathetic link to my confession, but it links none the less. Our lives were out of the ordinary yet it felt more normal than to be on land constantly pretending for someone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Expect some smut to be coming up.   
> I'm trying to think of cute little stories but all I can think of is Mclennon. Will think of more soon


	7. Rounded Windows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's something about round windows that make him nostalgic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I could be running out of ideas but I don't want to stop writing)  
> Ideas welcome!!!

Now that the mushy stuff is out of the way, it puts into context more stories and previously stated comments, no?

Let’s get on.

Rounded windows are usually de rigueur on subs and our one was no exception. They were just about larger than our heads and sat in rows either side of rooms. There we watched the water, not as clear as you might expect, gently lap at the glass, a vast blue out there with plenty of fish; we rarely saw an inch of life though. It was pretty nerve-wracking to think how close the waves were to us, just a few thick inches of glass which sounds like a lot, but in the vicinity of sharks it would feel all too thin. That was, we never rested in an area that would put us in the path of sharks, but it is always the thing to think of when looking out into what seemed to be calm waters, the threat of seeing a great white, even just its fin as it glided through the water uninterested in a huge metal thing in its home.

Nowadays we have the image of Jaws sneaking up with the infamous soundtrack building tension as we think the worse, a tiny white speck far in the distance could grow to a huge shark up close, but back then, there were submarine films where silence or the little blips on radars had us jumping out of our skin. If everyone else was quiet and only you were looking out the window, you would automatically assume danger was afoot. And of course, there were many pranks pulled if you happened to be daydreaming, watching the space out the window and the others would see you. George was the worst for this, coming up behind whoever was lost in thoughts of sharks or lonely submarines out in the wide ocean and yelling something into your ear.

“Alright Paulie!” I always remember him saying, not failing to add that extra scare by slapping me on the opposite shoulder to where he stood. I would always get him back, though, with a swift slap to wherever I could reach first.

There was a window in John’s and my bedroom just under my bed. If I lay in the right place, I could look down the bars that kept me from falling out of the top bunk (despite these bars that I looked through being on the wall side) and see the water. I could also see John on occasion, sleeping. Or he might be looking exactly where I was, his eyes dancing, writing a song in his mind. At night, the water was black and it looked like we were astronauts out in the realms of space minus the small balls of sparkles, stars far in the distance…

There was also one in Ringo and George’s room, but that one was covered up by a black bin liner. George had this nightmare that the bolts came loose and he was trying to save us all as we drowned in our little home, below the sea without anyone knowing. He came running into our room with Ringo following as well as rubbing his eyes and asking what the hell was going on. Poor George collapsed in John’s arms, relaying his dream between little, panicked sobs. He couldn’t sleep on the top bunk anymore because he feared his weight would bear down and somehow affect the window nor could he sleep on the bottom bunk because the window would be there, staring at him, reminding him of the frightening dream. It was an infuriated Ringo who ended up tearing a bin liner into a rough circle which he stuck to the window with excessive amounts of tape. Ringo had no patience at all and sleep was his number one love in his life; no girl could get between Ringo and his pillow. Still, George ended up sleeping better, now on the bottom bunk, but I half suspected that he forced Ringo to sleep next to him on the wall side some nights when he couldn’t get to sleep on his own. It kind of explained why they never found it strange when John and I shared a bed.

I never got used to square windows. I know it’s a weird thing to talk about, to base a whole chapter on it, but its these little thing, tiny moments, the things that we miss when it’s gone that we remember. The months we spent on land felt so… ordinary with its normal windows, normal people, normal kitchen appliances and beds.

I don’t think I’m cut out for normal life, that’s why I’m writing this. I miss my friends and my crush and my life away from the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also thought I would share this with who ever might read this.  
> I knew the phrase de rigueur but not how to spell it so I searched it and the example google gave me felt very appropriate for a Beatles fanfic
> 
> de rigueur  
> adjective  
> required by etiquette or current fashion.  
> "it was de rigueur for bands to grow their hair long"


	8. Firsts (part one)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A smutty chapter if you get past the first anecdote... sorry for that one by the way.

We were big on firsts. At least, I was. The sentimental type, I remember the firsts like;

-The first night of which you’ve all heard about

-The first week (we were not bored once)

-The first month or that day we surfaced again, celebrating our first successful month beneath the waves.

Then there were those less… celebrated and more cringed about. The toothbrush incident, for example, or the time we all got sick for a month. Oh, that was probably our worst time in the sub, worth a quick story.

So, it started a few days into submersion. We’d finished dinner and was sitting about feeling lazy, tired. All of a sudden, I found myself sneaking off to the loo. I figured it was because I ate too much or someone hadn’t cooked the food all the way through- I had quite a sensitive stomach- but it became a thing all the way through the night and my whole body ached. After I finally got to sleep that night, I woke up with a fever, a real case of the flu and a serious stomach upset. Over the next few days, we all seemed to go under this sickness, John next because he stayed the closest to me, Ringo after as he kept frequenting our room to bring us food- he insisted we kept eating and drinking so that we don’t get dehydrated or lose too much weight- then George as he was forced to care for us three or else watch us waste away. Then with four of us flailing about, cramps and sickening smells around the place, we couldn’t even surface because none of us had the strength.

We didn’t dare go near each other either. Embarrassment of having to get up for the toilet for the 6th time in five minutes, whether it be to evacuate the contents of our bowels or bellies, made us stay in separate rooms or at the very least at different ends of a room. We were stuck in a sticky, sickly smelling tube of germs with none of us getting better. Towards the end of the month, John summoned strength from somewhere to drag us up to the surface where we could smell some fresh air and perhaps take the week to get better. Thankfully, we were back to normal halfway through the second week that we stayed on land and spent the rest of the week scrubbing the sub top to bottom. We were not risking another humiliating and painful month ever again.

 On a lighter note, there were many firsts that were better to look back at and laugh rather than cringe in embarrassment. Well, some might still think of some moments with a shiver down their back, but most of us found it funny. I’m taking about those times in which we caught one another… Or that one night we got really drunk which is a double first. The first night we got really drunk and the first night we all kissed one another; I’ll get back to the former anecdote.

We got a load of beer, the cheapest shit we could find in a place that wouldn’t ID us. I mean, John and Ringo were old enough but most people assumed we got a fake ID from somewhere. Anyway, we said we would only have this beer on a special occasion, and would share one bottle between us… you could imagine how long it actually lasted. This night was one of those when you’re feeling sorry for yourself, when stuff just doesn’t feel right. It was the night of the anniversary of my mum’s death which seemed to affect me more now that I was not at home, I guess it was the idle time down in the sub that got me thinking. And John had also lost him mother, so he understood why I was sad. It affected him too. George and Ringo just hated the low feeling that hung in the probably stale air in the sub, and that turned into pretty negative, lethargic feelings of our own. As I said, sometimes we all felt low, it was bound to happen. We were all hormonal teenagers running from something in the world, even if it just was running from normality. Mood swings were inevitable.

Ringo was first to break open an ice-cold bottle and guzzle as much of it as he could in one fell swoop. We were all going to share it, but it seemed impossible when almost half was gone before Ringo had even sat down with us. I was next to get one, then the other two followed. We sat around the table either on the wall bench or on the fold-out chairs and we looked at one another with empathetic expressions.

And of course, John was having none of it.

“Let’s play a game!” Several games of 21 truths and a few beers later, we were all giggling like school girls, but we were bored of the game. So it was fun for a little while to get secrets out of our friends, but eventually, our mental faculties were lacking, we couldn’t think of questions. John was full of games, though. Seeing our empty bottles, he placed one in the middle of us and gestured towards it.

“Spin the bottle.” He slurred.

“But who are we gonna kiss, weirdo.”

“Each other.” John giggled and fell into George’s lap, lips puckered, reaching for the lips he’d fell short of. It took some persuading, I was all for it due to my already admitting how in love I was with John, but we got there eventually.

We all got the chance to kiss each other. I remember John physically picking up the bottle and placing it in the direction of one of us so that we would kiss someone we hadn’t yet. He was, annoyingly, all for equality. We all get kisses from everyone. I remember Ringo being sloppy and full on. He wouldn’t use tongue, understandably, and his nose kept getting in the way if ever we changed the sides we tilted our heads. In between chuckles, his kiss was pretty good. George was chaste and nervous, his lips touching yours like feathers, he was so soft. Put him and Ringo together, though, and they fought to overpower one another. For Ringo, he saw it as a joke. For George, it was an assertion of dominance, a fight for control. John, when he kissed me, was rough and genuine. I half wondered if he liked me back, if he knew that my kiss was sincere. We were the only ones, it seemed, who used tongue, but I’m not sure if anyone noticed. John and Ringo’s kiss was a cringeworthy giggle-fest. They couldn’t take a single second seriously, rolling their eyes back in mock pleasure, moaning. It was… probably the grossest. Then John and George kissed and… it was a highlight of the night for me. John held back for the initial touch allowing the younger man to reach his lips first, then he grew on him, kissing slightly rougher and guiding George to how he wanted to be kissed. George instantly submitted to the older man, allowing himself to be taken in by the dominance which was hugely different than the Ringo kiss. I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

We eventually dragged ourselves to bed, which sort of brings me onto that story before this kissing one. The first time we caught one another… well touching ourselves. Of course, these were on different days, different weeks and these times were in no way the lasts and, actually, no one was caught on that particular night, but I thought I would be. It was almost impossible to hide how turned on I was that evening.

I don’t remember every time we all caught someone else in the group, but of course I remember when I caught everyone and when a couple of people caught me.

John was probably the easiest to… accidently notice because we shared beds. I never actually ‘caught’ him though for my own selfish reasons. Anyway, as I have previously said, I could sometimes see John if I looked between the bars of the top bunk on the wall side. A huge upside to that was, John couldn’t see me, so a few times I had awaken in the night, quietly enough not to interrupt my friend in his activities, and could watch or listen to him get off. For me, who had this accidental, strong sexual feeling towards him, these moments I would indulge in some auditory voyeurism, letting John’s quiet huffs, gentle moans and thick accented curses turn me on too. He could never be entirely quiet during the height of pleasure, so it made for wonderful listening experience, fuck I remember him sounding so good.

Ringo, I walked in on when he was in the shower. He’d forgotten to lock the door and was a master at keeping his voice low under the sound of the spray, so I just walked in, thinking he wouldn’t mind if I grabbed my toothbrush as we often did that sort of thing. It would have been fine because I didn’t even look his way when I first walked in, I intended on keeping my head facing if a little to one side so I wouldn’t catch a glimpse of my friend buck naked and, had he stopped, turned the other way, I might have not seen more than I needed to of him. However, he was teetering on that edge, frantically pulling at himself when I pushed the door open. At that moment, he climaxed and in all his embarrassment, collapsed onto his knees. I took one look at him and mouthed a quick sorry before heading out the door quicker than my feet could carry me. I’ll never forget his helpless face lost in a mixture of confusion and pleasure, not sure which to feel.

George was skilled at never being caught. I don’t even think he had a regular time in which he would do that, which made it harder for us to catch him. One month, though, when Ringo was out working, John and I were sitting outside in the living room watching a movie. We weren’t really aware of George’s absence until we wanted something from him, some kind of food as he was the second in the kitchen command after Ringo. I think we both must have wandered into George’s room, well sort of burst in like we were police, only to find the young boy trying to cover himself up under the duvet.

“Alright guys?” He asked, gulping down his laboured breath and hiding the fact that he was not wearing a shirt. Not knowing if we should address it or not, John just asked if George would come out in a minute and make something for us to eat. George agreed all too enthusiastically. John and I faded out of his room and sat back where we had been before, wondering what the hell we had just seen. Then we burst out in silent laughter… we were so mean, making jokes before he came out to make us food. We then never spoke of it again.


	9. The Writing of Ringo's song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Yellow Submarine came to be written.  
> And by the way, I know that Paul actually wrote the song, but as its an AU, I'm crediting it to Ringo in this story. Sorry McCartney...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firsts part two on its way  
> I wrote this because I had an idea so I'll post the rest of firsts later

Sitting around, doing not much. The mornings could be bright or dark, depending on how early we woke and if the seas were stormy. On this particular morning, an important one for our band, the waters had been beyond rough, they'd been hurricane-like, tsunami type rough, pushing us this way and that. Rain had splattered at us like bullets all the way through the night, so we hadn't got much sleep the night before. Of course, it felt worst while floating in the sea rather than being above it, but we were expecting a full-blown storm on land. In reality, it was just a bit of rain and wind as we learnt later on. 

After the less than restful night, none of us were in the mood to do much. The only person who was doing something of substance, something he could benefit from, was Ringo with a book open about drums and reading music, about how rhythm is kept, that sort of thing. He told us before that if he couldn't hear what point everyone was in the song, he'd gauge it by watching John's arse. I know it sounds funny, but John had a particular way of moving to a song. Often, his left foot would be tapping along while his butt would be all in with the tune. If the music stopped, so did his butt. I thought Ringo was joking when he told me, but I took a moment during a rendition of John's song 'Help'- of which happened to be a song we all related to, a classic- to have a little look and sure enough, if you sat behind for every single song, you'd be able to tell where in the particular tune you were.

~~It also gave me an excuse to stare at his butt...~~

Us other lot were either eating- George, I think, had a bowl of bread rolls and was getting through them fast- or were lounging about with our instruments lying on us as though we had the intent to play them. We really hadn't the energy. I was of the latter category, lying on my back on the wall seat with the neck of my bass resting on my shoulder and next to my head. Somehow, I think John was multitasking. I remember him chomping on some kind of snack while his guitar was either between his legs or he had it under his head. Either way, I seem to remember him doing both. 

None of us really spoke to each other, there was nothing to say. I think some of us were trying to get back to sleep to make up for last night's lack of it while others were thinking of something to do. 

Eventually, though, you can guess who piped up with an idea. 

"Lets write a song together." John suggested.

"Well go on then." Ringo had said sounding a little bitter. He had once told me that it was always John and me, John and me, John and me when it came to new songs, then George would take over and make the composition for it. Ringo was simply the one told what to do. I hated that he felt like that and I knew John had meant to include us all in the writing process this time, so I piped up.

"Why don't you help us. You could write it and we'll do the rest?" I suggested, but Ringo just dismissed the whole idea. We went back to silence, I think now we were all writing songs in our head, just anything that we could spark the other's imaginations with because, if we were to come up with something good, it would cure our boredom as well as ease the sudden tension in the sub.

There was a long time of silence before Ringo begun randomly letting out this silly tune with equally as ridiculous lyrics. 

"We all live in a yellow submarine... a yellow submarine... a yellow submarine." Laughing, I then joined in for the next round of what would turn into the chorus, "We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine."

"Why yellow?" George had countered, because our sub was more rusted green if anything. 

"It was the only thing that fit with the tune." Ringo chuckled, then suggested something that became the iconic thing for our band, "We could paint it yellow, you know." 

You can probably guess what we did the week we surfaced. We had to stay above the water for a lot longer than before to wait until the whole Sub was completely dry, but it was totally worth it to see the one bright thing among the 'sea of green' (as we put it in the song)

That was the morning we spent writing our newest song, 'Yellow Submarine.' It was probably one of the silliest song I'd ever wanted to put my name to, but it, since that moment, became the song we would sing to start our practices, it was our song of our life, silly, unconventional and... well, accurate.


End file.
